


Compromising

by fabrega



Series: Drinking Buddies [2]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha hadn't expected to see Darcy again--well, possibly ever, but definitely not outside of an Avengers/SHIELD/Thor-related context. She certainly hadn't thought Darcy would show up at her apartment, looking for a place to crash after a cancelled flight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compromising

**Author's Note:**

> A mashup of MCU and Black Widow (2014) canon; set after The Avengers but before Thor: The Dark World.
> 
> Thanks to Alex for the once-over and the encouragement.

Natasha's instincts are processing the scene when she opens the door of her apartment building (hallway, stairwell, body) before her brain even catches up, so she enters the building at a crouch with her gun out in front of her. She catches up quickly, taking in the apartment doors (all closed), the hallway lights (flickering), the space under the stairs (just shadowy enough to not be written off), and the body (possibly still breathing but curled in on itself in a way that makes it difficult to tell from this distance). She debates quickly if it would be better to leave the door behind her open or closed before nudging it shut; she doesn't move quickly enough, though, because the cold air from outside hits the body and it stirs, uncurling slightly before folding in on itself and then suddenly jerking awake. Natasha rises to her feet, keeping her gun trained on it and scanning the hallway; she looks back and recognizes--"Darcy?"

Darcy's face lights up. "You're home!"

Natasha does not move. "What are you doing in my apartment building?"

Darcy grins at her and starts to gather the few things she'd had tucked around her on the stairs. "It's good to see you too!"

Natasha still does not move. There's no reason for Darcy to be here, no reason for her to even know where "here" is. She can count the number of people who know where she lives on one hand: two of them she works for, one of them works for her, one of them is her landlord, and the last one is Clint Barton. _None_ of them are Darcy Lewis. Her appearance here suggests some kind of trap, so Natasha repeats: "What are you doing in my apartment building?"

Darcy looks a little flustered. "Oh, you're serious." She stares at Natasha's gun for a moment before holding her hands up and continuing. "Okay, well. I was hoping I could crash with you tonight? My connecting flight through JFK's been cancelled--you probably saw, there's a kind of biblical blizzard going on outside right now--and the airline's being a bunch of butts and won't put me up in a hotel. Do you know how hard it is to find someplace cheap and not sleazy and not full to stay when all the airports in the city have just dumped a bunch of stranded passengers out onto the street?"

"I don't remember telling you where I live," Natasha says. Her voice is flat, with an accusatory note somewhere in the middle. She still has not made a move to lower her gun.

"Right, yes," Darcy says matter-of-factly, "Agent Hill gave me a number to call in case of emergencies, and I _may_ have asked her for your address."

Natasha blows out an annoyed sigh and finally holsters her weapon. "Just--just stay there for a second," she tells Darcy, digging around in her bag for her phone. Darcy shrugs agreeably, her hands still up, and sits back down on the stairs while Natasha pulls her coat more tightly around her, steps outside, and dials Maria's number.

"This is Hill."

"Hey," Natasha says carefully, "I was wondering if you'd heard from my mom--she's not picking up when I call."

Maria laughs at Natasha's code phrase. "No, Natasha, I haven't been kidnapped in the less-than-an-hour since you left HQ. What's going on?"

"Did you tell Darcy Lewis where I live?" Natasha demands. "Was there not somewhere for her to stay at HQ?"

There is a pause, and Natasha hears Maria talking to somebody else in the room for a moment before returning to the phone. "Yes, apparently I did tell Darcy Lewis where you live. All our spare rooms are full of agents who couldn't make it home tonight because they've shut down the buses and half the subway lines. Besides, that's not what Ms. Lewis asked for--she asked for you specifically."

"And you always accommodate what people ask for," Natasha mutters to herself.

"Look," Hill says, and her voice is quieter too, "If you don't want her there, kick her out."

"That's not the point--" Natasha tries to interrupt, but Maria keeps talking over her.

"I thought that you two had hit it off after the whole New York thing; if I misread that situation, that's on me."

Maria's...not wrong. Natasha's first assignment after the Battle of New York had been a protection detail for Dr. Foster and her intern Darcy, and it had ended with Natasha asleep in Darcy's bed at HQ. Natasha hadn't been operating at full strength emotionally then ( _compromised_ , that was what she'd told Clint before the portal had even opened, that was the word she'd used with the SHIELD-mandated therapist before the nightmares had let up) and she'd been willing to write the whole thing off as a mistake and never think about it again. People like her did not do things like that. She sighs into the phone. "That was seven months ago," she says. When Maria does not apologize further (or really, apologize at all), Natasha continues: "I hope you at least chewed her out for using your emergency line when it wasn't an emergency."

"Supervillains, terrorists, intergalactic incidents," Maria agrees. "Have a good night, Natasha." The call ends abruptly.

Natasha stands on the building's stoop for a few moments longer, pulling her coat closer around her as the wind whips past. Then she heads back inside. It's just one night; she can do this. She can be the friendly, sort-of open, mostly non-threatening person Darcy remembers. She's good at being someone else. Besides, she reminds herself as Darcy's face brightens at the sight of her, she _does_ like Darcy. She's genuine and friendly and cute, and it hadn't _just_ been an exhausted brokenness that had landed her in Darcy's room that night.

"So what would you have done if I hadn't shown up tonight?" Natasha asks, picking up the things she'd dropped in the doorway, moving past Darcy and up the stairs.

"Well, Agent Hill said you'd be home--" Darcy begins. Natasha reinforces her smile, both at Darcy's surety and the way she's dragging her suitcase up the stairs, its wheels hitting every step in turn. Leaving aside her anger with her location being disclosed in the first place, that Natasha would be home tonight had been a bold claim to make. The quinjet had barely made it in because of the weather, and she'd had to hike the distance home from HQ. "--but there's a guy ten blocks from here who runs a 'hostel' out of his spare bedroom who told me when I called that I sounded 'pretty' and that we could discuss the, uh, terms of payment when I got there."

Natasha turns from the door of her apartment and smirks at Darcy. "Oh man, he's got a spare room? All I've got is a sofa. Are you sure you don't want to take him up on that?"

Darcy doesn't reply, just gives a full-body shudder and waltzes past Natasha into the apartment. She sheds her suitcase, winter attire, and sneakers just inside the door and basically dives for the sofa. Natasha takes her own bag to her bedroom, unpacks it quickly, and closes the bedroom door behind herself when she returns to the living room with a pile of blankets and sheets for Darcy. Darcy has vacated the sofa and is crouched down beside the door out to the balcony, making soft cooing noises at the black cat that is pressing itself against the glass of the door. She looks up at Natasha and grins. "I didn't know you had a cat!"

Natasha bites back the urge to respond _three hours ago you didn't know I had an apartment_ and instead goes with "I don't have a cat. It's not my cat." It is definitely not her cat. She has certainly never let it into her apartment before, never fed it or let it rub its head idly against her hand while talking to it. She has absolutely not named it. If it wasn't so cold outside, she'd leave it out there to prove a point, but... "I don't have a cat," she repeats, even as she cracks the door open and beckons the cat inside.

Darcy raises an eyebrow at Natasha and tips back on her heels so she's seated on the floor; the cat slinks back and forth across her newly-available lap. "Okay, you may not have a cat, but the cat definitely has a Natasha."

Natasha allows herself to roll her eyes, but she smiles as the cat settles in on top of Darcy.

"Her name's Liho," Natasha says, although she knows she shouldn't. Darcy smiles, at her and at Liho, and Natasha continues, "It means 'bad luck'."

Darcy gasps mock-seriously and gently grabs Liho's head with both her hands so that she can make eye contact with the cat. "Don't listen to the mean lady, kitten. You're not bad luck," she says to it, nuzzling it with her nose. Liho makes an inquisitive noise and nuzzles Darcy back.

Natasha sighs dramatically and moves into the kitchen. She opens the refrigerator and peers inside, contemplating what amount of hospitality is actually required when someone reappears in your life and invites herself to stay overnight. She hopes it's nothing fancy; between her real job and the freelance ones she picks up in her off hours, she's not really set up here for entertaining. (Honestly, they're both just lucky that she even has a sofa.) She reaches into the fridge, hesitates, and calls back to Darcy, "You want a beer or something?"

Darcy's answer is a barely-audible negative and that's probably just as well; Natasha doesn't know how old the beer is, just keeps it in her fridge for occasions like this, which are few and far between. She stares hard at the unfamiliar black and green labels on the bottles and wonders where they'd come from--Clint, if she had to guess, because she doesn't have many people over, let alone people who would bring a six-pack with them. When she looks up from the fridge, Darcy is leaning against the counter, smiling at her. The cat curls almost desperately around Darcy's ankles, and since the cat is definitely not Natasha's cat, she definitely does not experience anything like a pang of jealousy at how much Liho seems to like Darcy.

"Actually," Darcy says, "Do you have any hot cocoa or anything?" Natasha hums an affirmative, and Darcy watches with interest as she digs through the cabinets briefly and then busies herself with the stove. "So, uh," she begins after several long moments, breaking what Natasha had thought was a nice, comfortable silence, "How was your day?"

Natasha can't help the laughter that escapes her. _That's_ Darcy's opener--the most domestic sentence that has probably ever been uttered in Natasha's apartment?

"Rough day at the office, huh?" Darcy forges ahead bravely, obviously not quite sure how to take Natasha's laughter.

"You could say that." Natasha is not allowed to talk about the mission today, about how she'd done her part perfectly only to be met with a botched extraction, about the decided lack of apologies she has received from anyone involved--she doesn't want a lot, just a simple acknowledgement that they are all professionals and that somebody else had fucked up. Then she'd had to sit through that debrief, with nobody taking responsibility for what had gone wrong, with the meaningful looks Hill had been shooting her that make so much more sense in retrospect, and after all that, she'd still had to make the long, cold slog home to find that she has a houseguest. Yeah, it had been a rough day at the office. "A lot of things didn't quite go according to plan today."

Darcy nods, her look mostly understanding with a twinge of what might be guilt in there. "And if you told me more than that, you'd have to kill me?"

Natasha doesn't answer that, just redirects. "How about you?" she asks, keeping her attention on the stove, "Did you have a fun-filled day of travel delays?"

Darcy snorts. "You could say that," she echoes. "I've been up since what, like, 3am Eastern? Time zones are the _worst_. Then there's the airport security for international flights--I know I have a magnificent rack, security dudes, but you really don't need to grope me like I'm hiding a bazooka in there."

"Where were you flying from?" Natasha deliberately ignores the comments about Darcy's rack, although she may clutch the wooden spoon she's holding a little tighter.

"Jane and I were in Zurich; she was presenting a paper at a conference, and I went along because, duh, I'm not going to turn down international travel." Darcy grins at her.

"So where's Jane? Did you leave her at the airport?"

"Her travel was paid for by the conference, so she left on Sunday. I paid for my own ticket--well, Jane helped, but it was the two of us--and so I got to fly home on Tuesday because it's cheaper. Besides, a few more days sightseeing isn't a bad thing, right? But that means she's already home, and I'm stuck here."

"That must be awful for you," Natasha teases.

"'Awful' was the argument I got into with the airline rep who wouldn't book me on another flight. 'Awful' was the creepy old Important Dude who followed me around the conference and kept trying to grab my ass. This? Not so much with the awful." Darcy smiles. "It's good to see you again. I wasn't sure if or when I'd get to."

"Apparently it was as easy as calling up SHIELD and asking for my address," Natasha says, making an effort to keep the annoyance from her voice, to fill it with pleasantness instead. She empties the saucepan she's been tending into two mugs, deposits a spoon in each, and hands one to Darcy.

"I explained to Agent Hill about my travel problems; it's not like she'd tell just anyone where you live, probably." Darcy stops and looks down into the mug she's been handed. "Oh, you got me...some milk. Thanks?"

Natasha unwraps a small piece of chocolate and drops it into Darcy's mug. "Stir," she commands, doing the same to her own mug.

"You're some kind of wizard," Darcy breathes, unable to keep the glee from her face as the chocolate begins to melt into her drink.

Natasha grins against the lip of her mug. "No, I just spent some time undercover in South America." They return to the living room and drink their hot chocolate in silence, Darcy on the sofa, Natasha perched in a trendy-looking chair she's never actually used before. Then it's late and they've both had long days and Natasha isn't quite sure if it's appropriate to say _hey, do you want to_ (and isn't sure, really, if she wants to either) so Darcy unfurls Natasha's spare sheets on the sofa and Natasha crawls into her own bed alone, burrowing into the sheets, and is asleep almost immediately.

*

Natasha's phone buzzes at her insistently the next morning, dragging her unpleasantly from slumber. "Hello?" she mouths into it, the sleep not quite gone from her voice.

Maria Hill is on the other end of the call. "We need you to come in; we've got a level 3, local."

"Affirmative," Natasha mumbles, although it comes out sounding a little bit more like _fuck you_ than she intends. She moves quickly and quietly through her morning routine, then steps out into the living room. Darcy is fast asleep on the sofa, and the cat is pacing back and forth in front of the balcony door. Natasha opens the door and shoos Liho outside, then leans down close over the sofa and shakes Darcy gently. She really doesn't like the idea of leaving Darcy here by herself (she imagines that Darcy will probably spend some time rummaging through her cabinets and dressers before she leaves--luckily this place isn't as much _home_ as it should be) but Darcy's flight isn't until this afternoon and it's not like Natasha can bring her houseguest along to whatever emergency the city is having today, so there aren't a lot of choices. 

"Darcy," she says. "I have to go. Pull the door closed behind you when you leave. The handle should lock automatically."

"Do you _have_ to go?" Darcy murmurs, grabbing Natasha's wrist and pulling it with her as she rolls over to face the back of the sofa.

"It's the job," Natasha says, extricating herself from Darcy's grip and heading for the door.

"Kick some ass," Darcy calls sleepily, not rolling back over.

"Travel safe," Natasha replies quietly as she closes the door behind her.

*

The level 3 threat turns out to be an army of flying robots; they are zooming around the city, melting things with their heat rays, babbling in tiny robotic voices about someone named SALLY MAYHEM, who is presumably the wannabe-supervillain who'd programmed them. According to the brief she receives, the whole thing had started with the robots robbing several large, respectable banks; after they'd cleaned out the vaults, the robots had begun to cause general chaos on the streets. The SHIELD team is able to subdue the robots relatively easily at first, but it turns out that their AI is an adaptive hivemind that quickly learns their enemy's tactics. It's the kind of situation that somebody like Stark would probably be useful for, but SHIELD has an unofficial official policy of _Do Not Bother Tony Stark Unless It's a World-Ending Emergency, Because Oh My God, That Guy_ , which Natasha finds herself unable to argue with.

They manage to track the AI's control signal to a robotics lab at NYU, where Natasha draws her gun on a blonde in a lab coat and goggles. "Are you Sally Mayhem?" she asks.

The woman sighs. "It's Jeanette, actually." She goes on to admit that she really was just trying to steal enough money to pay off her six-figure college loans, because come on, this fucking _economy_. "D'you, do you get it? Sallie Mae-hem?"

Natasha rolls her eyes. "I've shot people for puns less bad than that," she says, and she means it.

Rather than monologuing any further, Jeanette helps Natasha disable the robots. There's a bit where it's touch-and-go, where the shutdown code needs to be deployed faster than the hivemind can override it, but in the end, the robots are turned off and the city is safe again, for now.

"We're still going to have to arrest you," Natasha tells her.

"Oh, yeah, no, that's fair," Jeanette agrees.

Natasha also suggests she get in touch with Stark, not just because she knows that working for him is its own weird kind of punishment. "Pretty sure Stark Industries could always use a brain like yours," she says. Jeanette smiles at her shyly as the SHIELD agents cuff her, and Natasha thinks that, all things considered, this could have gone much, much worse. The SHIELD debrief goes well too, with only a few injured agents to account for. 

Agent Hill pulls her aside after the debrief and apologizes--for yesterday's extraction, for calling her in again so soon after the last mission, for the assumptions that had been made about Natasha and Darcy and how welcome Ms. Lewis' presence would be at Natasha's apartment.

"We're all just doing our jobs," Natasha says, allowing herself to look pleased by the set of apologies.

Maria quirks an eyebrow at her. "Your visitor isn't an assignment, Romanov."

"I know that, that's not what I--" Natasha stutters, somehow unable to form a coherent sentence in her own defense.

Maria looks like she's trying not to smile, like she's trying not to make some wry remark like _this thing called friendship, have you heard of it, Agent Romanov_ , which Natasha would probably deserve but which she's also very glad not to be on the end of anyway. "You know," Maria says instead, "It took me a long time to realize that not all emotional attachments were bad things, that they didn't necessarily compromise me and my ability to do my job and live my life--and I just had the normal kind of shitty childhood."

Natasha gives Maria a cool, careful look. The teasing would have been better than this weird earnestness.

"You know best your own limitations, of course--" Maria continues, and Natasha bristles at that and tries not to think about why, "--so just, y'know, keep up the good work." She offers Natasha a tight-lipped smile and quickly exits the room. Natasha gathers her things and heads for home.

*

When Natasha opens the door to her apartment, she is tackled back into the hallway immediately, a pair of arms wrapped firmly around her torso. She reacts without thinking, kicking out precisely so, grabbing her assailant, flipping them over onto the floor, and removing her handgun from its holster in one swift movement.

Darcy stares up the barrel of the gun at her. "What the hell?" Natasha asks, helping Darcy to her feet.

Darcy squares her shoulders, wincing slightly, and lifts her chin defensively. "Am I not allowed to be glad that you're okay?"

"It didn't occur to you that I might--" Natasha makes a series of complicated gestures approximating the fight they'd nearly just had.

"I got excited!" Darcy protests.

Natasha forces a smile and ushers Darcy back into the apartment. There is a small part of her that actually finds the whole thing kind of endearing, _what the hell_. "I thought you were leaving," she says.

"Robot-related travel delays," Darcy says with a shrug. "The lady at the airline said something about it being impossible to fly a plane through a swarm of deathbots."

Natasha looks around the apartment. Darcy's things are spread across the living room sort of haphazardly, which makes it probably the most lived-in it's looked since Natasha moved in. Liho is even curled up on the sofa, trying not to look interested; Darcy tells her _she missed you_ and _she ran to the door when you got home_ , which Natasha feels like she ought to doubt until the cat leaps down from the sofa and rubs itself insistently against her legs. "So you just stayed here all day?" Natasha asks her.

"You didn't leave me a key, and the city was being overrun by robots with laser arms; your apartment seemed like the best option. I ordered some takeout, used your laundry machines, and hacked your neighbor's wifi to Skype Jane. Oh, and I had to watch the local channels to see what was up with the deathbots. Did you know CNN didn't even bother covering it?!"

Natasha shrugs. "It's not like it's really news, just one sad grad student."

"And her army of killer robots," Darcy says, giving Natasha a strange look. "Your life is crazy ridiculous, you know that, right?"

"Hey, you're the one who tased a Norse god," Natasha counters. "You want to get something to eat?"

"I'm starving," Darcy concurs, pulling on her coat and hat.

They end up at a sketchy-looking diner Natasha likes that has some of the best burgers she's ever eaten. (It's not Natasha's first choice, a little hole-in-the-wall place around the corner from Natasha's apartment that serves relatively authentic Ukrainian food, but it turns out that place had an actual hole melted in its actual wall during today's supervillainy. Natasha wishes fleetingly that she had gotten in one or two good punches before Jeanette had decided to cooperate.) When they leave the burger place, Darcy links her arm through Natasha's and they walk close together, Darcy bumping deliberately up against Natasha until somehow Darcy's hand is in Natasha's coat pocket and their fingers are laced together.

Made suddenly, stupidly brave by the things Maria had said earlier and Darcy's sly smile, Natasha leans over in the cold night air and kisses her. She's not sure where the impulse comes from, but she likes it--and so does Darcy, it seems, because Darcy leans into the kiss and refuses to be the first one to pull away.

When they get back to Natasha's apartment, Darcy has her pushed up against the wall pretty much as soon as the front door closes. They both shed coats, hats, gloves, scarves, shoes as best they can without moving away from each other. Natasha is not in the habit of using this type of thing as anything except leverage, as anything except a weapon, and it is difficult to shut off the part of her brain that is constantly evaluating positioning, angles, pressure points--avenues of escape--even as Darcy makes breathy noises against her mouth.

She thinks about how, after New York, she had known that she'd been too much of a mess, too compromised, to do all the things with Darcy she'd wanted to. She'd known at the time that it had been the right decision; now, she feels compromised, but she doesn't want to stop.

Natasha pushes Darcy a little, gets her own back away from the wall, and they kiss their way towards the bedroom. Darcy's hands are all over her, peeling off the layers of Natasha's clothing and leaving them strewn on the floor behind them. Natasha returns the favor, her fingers on Darcy's skin as she kisses Darcy's lips, her jaw, her neck, her collarbone. Darcy moves backwards until her knees hit Natasha's mattress, at which point she sits abruptly and pulls Natasha down onto her lap.

"You know," Darcy whispers into her ear, "I've thought about this a lot." This draws Natasha up short, because she'd been willing to write Darcy off as a mistake and Darcy had been daydreaming about her? That is--that is--that is worrying, that is hot, that is _terrifying_.

She needs to regain some control.

She pushes Darcy back onto the bed and leans down over her, kissing a trail down her neck to her torso to her thighs, relishing the tiny high-pitched noises Darcy can't help making as the kisses trail back upwards. Natasha grins at Darcy (and that's her, that's mostly her, right? not her reflexes, not her instincts, not the part of her that is looking for leverage) and licks gently at Darcy's clit, not breaking eye contact. Darcy moans and angles her hips up into Natasha's mouth. She curls her fingers tightly into Natasha's hair, and Natasha has one disorienting moment where the pressure makes her feel _trapped_ instead of _wanted_ , but it resolves itself quickly, the taste of Darcy in her mouth, warm and wet, what she wants. This is another thing Natasha is good at, and it isn't long before Darcy's hips arch up and she moans Natasha's name long and loud. Natasha plunges one finger, then two, deep into Darcy, feels Darcy clenching around her, uses her fingers to coax another orgasm out from somewhere deep inside her.

Darcy collapses into a grinning, boneless heap. Natasha smiles at her, kisses the soft spot above her hipbone, and crawls up the bed to curl up beside her. "Good?" Natasha asks. Darcy doesn't answer, just draws in a long, deep breath and lets it out in a stream of giggles.

Natasha smiles and gets up from the bed to turn off the light. Darcy grabs for her and manages to get purchase on one of her legs. "No, no, noooo, where are you going?" she whines.

Natasha looks down at her. "You seem really worn out--I thought you might want to sleep."

Darcy's eyes are mostly closed, and she flails half-heartedly at Natasha with her free arm. "'S not fair," she murmurs.

"What's not fair?"

"I got off, but you..." Darcy trails off. She lets go of Natasha's leg and nestles into a pillow instead. Natasha moves quickly through the apartment, turning off lights, making sure the doors and windows are closed and locked, plugging her phone in next to the bed. She pulls on her t-shirt and a pair of underwear before crawling back into the bed and nestling close. Darcy is fast asleep--no surprise--and Natasha listens to her breathe for several long minutes before getting up, closing herself in the bathroom, and leaning heavily against the door while she touches herself. She comes quickly, holding herself still and straight and struggling to keep her breath even, thinking of Darcy.

*

Natasha's phone buzzes at her once the next morning, pulling her from sleep, not nearly as early as yesterday had been. She groans and rolls over to check it; there is a single secure text from Maria: TAKE THE DAY OFF. Maria Hill does not use emoticons, but if she did, Natasha can tell that there would have been a smiley face on the end of the message. "Why would she feel the need to text me that?" Natasha mutters, shaking her head and collapsing back down onto her pillow.

Next to her, Darcy stirs. "Do you have to go?" she says, not quite awake. She turns over and grabs Natasha, pulls her close, slides a hand up under Natasha's shirt to clutch her closer.

"No," Natasha says, turning slightly to press a kiss to Darcy's shoulder, snuggling backwards into Darcy's embrace. She can be this person; she wants to be this person. "Today I'm all yours."


End file.
